French edition of Chiu Ruo-lung’s Seediq Bale graphic novel to be published in France
邱若龍 法國秀台灣原住民文化

One of Chiu Ruo-lung’s design manuscripts for the movie Seediq Bale, which was on display in a comics exhibit at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris last month during “Taiwan week.”圖為漫畫家邱若龍的《賽德克．巴萊》電影設計稿。該手稿上月於龐畢度亞洲動漫展台灣週登場。

Photo: Chen Yi-ching, Liberty Times照片：自由時報記者陳怡靜

Comic artist Chiu Ruo-lung, who created the original Seediq Bale comic that inspired the movie of the same name, was invited to attend the Planete Manga festival at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris during its “Taiwan week” activities last month. While he was there, he taught young French children how to draw Taiwan Aboriginal tattoo designs. He says comics are a great medium for letting the reader explore the author’s world through his or her creation, and says art can be used to express so many different things, making it easier to communicate with young people.

This trip to France allowed Chiu to gain a better understanding of how the French respect various cultures. According to Chiu, Taiwanese have never made a serious attempt at letting people outside Taiwan know that there are Aborigines in Taiwan. Instead, they have usually given the impression that everyone on the island is Chinese, but actually the Aborigines are the true “masters” of Taiwan, which is similar to the meaning of “Sediq bale.” The exhibit at the center showed the world that Taiwan does not have a monolithic culture. When the film Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale was shown there on April 22, it allowed people to understand that, aside from movies in Chinese, Taiwan also has films in Austronesian languages, and that Taiwan is a pluralistic, democratic, and multilingual nation.

Chiu says that in order to get rid of the impression people have of the Sediq as always fighting, he has included many cute stories in his bilingual graphic novel, which was released in Taiwan last month. It also includes a CD of Iwan Nawi reading in Sediq. Chiu says the book is very suitable reading for children. The graphic novel will be translated into French and published by the France-based Akata publishing house. The editorial director at Akata , Dominique Veret, says the book is to be launched in January during next year’s Angouleme International Comics Festival, the biggest comics festival in Europe.

(Liberty Times, Translated by Kyle Jeffcoat)

TODAY’S WORDS
今日單字

1. tattoo n.

刺青 (ci4 qing1)

例: Getting a tattoo is more painful on certain areas of the body than it is on others.

(刺青在身體某些部位比其他部位疼痛。)

2. democratic adj.

民主的 (min2 zhu3 de5)

例: China and North Korea are not democratic nations, they are authoritarian.